Love, Loss, and pocket watches
by the other ghost girl
Summary: Nathan Grace is an accountant who lives near Victorian London, 22 years ago he was the only survivor of a tragic house fire that left him without any blood relatives or memories of his life before. Now the one person who helped him through that time in his life is dead and has left him everything, including a letter,a peculiar pocket watch, and an awful choice to make   OC cast


**this idea has been sitting in my head for awhile now, it's just that recently I've gotten the guts to actually type it. :D there's an alternate ending that I might post as a follow up chapter but for the most part this is a one shot. **

It had been twenty two years since Nathan's unfortunate accident which had caused him to lose most of his memories except the bare essentials and Emily (a close friend first to his mother ,who was deceased long before his accident, and to his family as a whole) had taken him in. It had been a very frustrating time for both of them, For Emily it was sad and depressing to see him struggle and deny his ever having met her, for Nathan it was frustrating to have no memories of the family that had died in the fire he and Emily had barely escaped, in fact few memories other than his name and having to deal with the

equally frustrating doctors who kept trying to convince Emily to put him in one of those awful lunatic asylums. Throughout the ordeal Emily had been by his side, always steadfast and never waivering, Eventually she had staved off the doctors by convincing them that he had in fact gained his memories.

He had been 17 then, now, at 39, a successful accountant and a far less successful amateur fiction novelist, He was watching as Emily's casket was lowered into the cold unforgiving ground. Emily had been in her forties at the time of the fire and the years had not been kind to her, even though she tried to make him think otherwise, Nathan had noticed. He was surprised that she had lived to such an old age. As the sparse funeral procession began to leave with the exception of himself, the lawyer who was in charge of her will approached him, and handed him a normal postal envelope, one that seemed to have a oddly shaped lump inside of it. The lawyer had already informed him soon after her death that she had left him everything, including her house in the country. The questioning glance that he gave him was met with a small telling me not to inform you of it's existence until afterwards." He nodded Emily had always enjoyed keeping him in suspense. Every birthday she would give him all of his presents except for the largest, which she would keep to herself until the point when he least expected it to come, usually on a day when work or the doctors where particularly tiresome or infuriating. Despite the grim and sad nature of this gift he couldn't help but smile at this last unexpected present from beyond the grave. After taking a carriage home (for the one the funeral home had hired for the mourners had left long before he had stopped mourning) to the house that now officially belonged to him he sat down got himself a small glass of brandy and opened the envelope. It contained a letter that seemed to have been written at least 19 years prior judging by the fragile yellowing parchment, it also contained a pocket watch with strange engravings upon it, which were barely visible through the dust that seemed to have accumulated on it. For some reason the watch seemed to feel right, and almost familiar in his hands, and even though it had obviously not been touched in a very long time it was warm. Nathan pushed the last thought aside and attributed it to the sweaty and excitable hands of the lawyer on the envelope, which he was grateful for protecting the expensive piece of inheritance, for the man surely would have kept it to himself if it hadn't been there. He put the watch on the arm of the chair and began to read the letter, which was written in Emily's familiar and peculiar scrawl,

"_Dear Nathan,_

_If you are reading this letter it means that I am not only dead but I am also buried, and that you now have in your possession my most peculiar trinket, there has been much that we have endured together, and even more that I have kept from you, I wish I could tell you all of this now, while I'm still alive for I have seen you staring into the distance, lost in thought, like you can't remember something that is vital, I long to ease your pain. But I know that it must be this way, for I am too weak to do what must be done. So I leave the task, and the awful, horrible, difficult decision to you. This letter contains the truth of your past, of the fire, of our relationship. Many of the details shall seem impossible, and you may think that I'm simple a mad woman, or telling one last story, but you know deep inside that it's true. Every word. You must know that you are not Nathan Grace.-"_

He paused taking in the meaning of those words. He'd always known that Emily had been hiding something about his past from him, he just wasn't exactly sure what. Too many of dreams he had of daring adventures in far away lands seemed too realistic, but the revelation that his name was also a lie had hit him hard. He took a few moments and listened to the increasingly loud and frequent sound of rain hitting the roof of the country house and the thunderous sound of a clock ticking in the other room before he began reading again.

"_you weren't born in London, you were born far away in a land called Gallifrey, you are not even human." _he took another few moments to calm himself, The idea of him being born somewhere other than London, even a little known land is a notion that isn't something that was too impossible, Many adventurers and explorers have been known to find new land, or at least they claimed to, however the claim that he was something other than human was purely outlandish. However as he pondered the idea something about the claim seemed right. "I must be going mad" he muttered to himself after a few more moments of thought, then he continued to read the letter.

"_the land you hail from is far from London, nestled among the stars, or at least it used to be-" _he paused again to mutter quietly to himself "**used** to be?" before continuing

"_when I first met you I was 16 years of age and you looked much the same as you do __as I write this letter, I was born many years after this time, and I was reckless when I met you and danger seemed to follow your coat tails, (lord I've been in this time so long I'm even writing like them) You where hesitant to act but you saved my life at the last second and stole my heart, you returned a year later and I had left home, You asked me to come with you, and I did. You showed me so many wonders... and yet as I aged you remained the same, You told me that you would not age the same rate as I would, and when I died you would still be the same age, then you gave me a choice, leave and he would return me to London of my time, and I could find a human who could love me and I could have children and grow old with, or I could stay and travel with you. I chose to stay. While many humans gave us strange looks when our travels brought us to earth, and many mistook me for your mother, but on your home world they rarely gave me a second look once they learned I was human. We were so happy you and I. But it wasn't to last. As I neared my 40_th_ birthday your people began to wage war with their greatest enemies, _

_a menace called the daleks,-"_ a image, one of many that had plagued his nightmares, suddenly flashed in front of him, a vision that momentarily obscured the letter, it was a creature that was cased in armor shaped like a pepper shaker with orbs attached to the bottom in vertical lines, it seemed to have a plunger sticking out of what would be a face in a bizarre parody of a nose and another protrudes from it's chest along with another strange implement like arms. The image fades quickly but causes Nathan to pause. To anyone else it might be a humorous image, but the vision causes him to shiver, he quickly begins reading again

"_you tried to persuade them to come to a peaceful agreement, or find a quiet way of destroying them rather than an all war, When they told you that there were no other options left you tried to leave with the proclamation that 'at least one timelord would survive' some where fooled that you meant yourself, but I knew that you spoke of another, They tried to force you into service and commandeer your ship but we escaped. Nathan,you must understand that this ship of your's is not oridinary, for not only does it sail across the stars, it sails through __**time**__" _Nathan stopped for a moment again, and then quickly reread it, This was possibly the most fantastic thing that he had heard of, a ship that could go through time... even though the letter's tale got more and more implausible and fantastic with each sentence he began to believe it more readily as it progressed, shaking his head he took a deep breath and continued reading

"_you took us to the most unlikely place they'd look, during a time when orphans where unfortunately common. You landed your ship behind the house I live in as I write this letter, the one you probably live in even as you read it. Unless something has happened to it, or another timelord has_ _discovered it, it is probably still there. Do not go look for it just yet, wait until you have finished the letter."_

he paused once again in his reading.

"_on your ship you had a machine, one that would make you appear human, and make you think you were, it would take your memories of our travels and replace them with false ones,it would even take everything that makes you what you are and who you are and stores it in a single object... but it went wrong, you were not supposed to awaken from the experience with no memories at all. I checked the object storing your memories, your personality, in essence your soul, and it was there, safe and sound._

_The machine created the illusion that you where human perfectly and even implanted false memories of your existence here in London. You had instructed me to return your soul and turn you back to normal after word of Gallifrey stopped reaching your ship. Unfortunately you had not anticipated how long the war would rage. It was four years until all word of Gallifrey ceased. Four years in which I began to know the human illusion that kept your body alive, and I began to care for him, you, as a nephew,when the time came to destroy him and bring the true you back... I couldn't. Even if it meant that I would never see my one true love again... Now I give the horrible choice to you. The envelope contains a pocket watch, your true soul lies sleeping inside of it, if you open it your illusion will die and the true you will spring forth, and all of the memories you lost shall be returned to you, but a piece of the illusion you have lived for twenty two years shall live on inside you, or so you told me before undergoing the procedure, you will know where the key to your ship is and where to find it, but my dear Nathan, you may also choose to never open that pocket watch until you're dying day, and let the wonderful amazing man I fell in love with, and died for, die with you. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to make the decision for you. _

_Love, _

_your dearest Emily."_

He finished the last line with his heart pounding, he looked over at the pocket watch that seemed so innocent at first, and now seemed incredibly dangerous. At first his decision was no, he would bury the watch and never think or speak of it or the impossible things spoken of in the letter, and live to be a wrinkly old man with a few grandchildren. He picked upthe watch to do just that when he got a flash of the image of a elderly man, standing by himself, alone. Searching for the watch until he dies of cold.

Somehow he knew the elderly man was him, and if he chose to hide the watch this was his future his end, he sat down in the arm chair again and took a swig of brandy. He studied the watch for a long time. "But I don't want to die." He said softly, the fear in his own voice startled him. He heard something whisper to him, quite enough that some might say it was the wind. "No one does, but we all do, eventually. Even Emily didn't die willingly" the whisper was in his voice but he could hear a slight differences, even though they where minor. There was a uneasy silence. "was she happy?" the whisper asked. "she pretended to be, but even though she tried to hide it I could tell she missed you." Nathan replied. The voice was silent and so was he and for what seemed like hours the only noise that could be heard was the sound of the clock in the other room and the rain on the roof. Then Nathan sighed took one last swig of brandy, and opened the watch.


End file.
